Arrival in New Zealand
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2008
1
22
102
Trip End
Jun 14, 2009
Auckland,
North Island,
New Zealand
Friday, August 29, 2008
New Zealand
Thanks to Kelly we had a insider info on getting cheap travel from Auckland airport to town and the name of a great hostel right smack bang of the centre,ACB. We got to the hostel at around 6am and they checked us in straight away so we had our room. The flight had been tiring but we weren't in the mood for sleep so we headed out to town to get a good fryup.
Given that we only planned to spend 2 days in Auckland we had alot to cram in so by mid morning Auckland museum was ticked off the list, then we went to the Skytower the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. I was feeling the lag coming on and felt i needed to wake up a bit so did the Skyjump-I jumped off the Skytower, 196m where you jump off the tower and drop initially about 25m or so to the observation deck level and other toourists can point and laugh, then you free fall for about 10s and the last 4 secs you have a controlled landing. The skyjump is different from a bungy in that you aren't upside down it's more like a skydive except you have cables and harnesses rather than a parachute
Mauri sculptures
. Sarah was on the observation deck and she caught the whole thing on the camcorder but the file is too large to go on the blog but i can show it to you guys when we get home.later we booked our Hiace Campervan for our travels, we have become the Irish pikies (knacks) (or for Fingal staff - members of the travelling community). We checked around a few companies and the one we liked the best was "Juicy".
That evening we paid a short visit to the Famous Minus 5 Bar on Princes Warf. I say short because the bar is an ice bar kept at around -5C and everything is made out of ice, walls, tables, chairs,glasses and sculptures. You can only stay in there for 25mins and you have to wear cold weather gear which they give you. probably the nicest cocktail we've ever had! Anyhow tiredness was definitely kicking in again so we had a lovely cheapy cheapy Thai dinner then hit the hay fo the night.
Next morning we obviously still hadn't adjusted to the time zone thing cause we were up by 6.30am. after breakfast we headed down to the dock to catch the ferry to one of the nearby islands. The ferry company's name was FULLERS!- you just can't get away from the guy!
We took the ferry to Rangitoto island and hiked to the top of the volcano crator where there is a class view of Auckland bay and the island. Rangito island didn't exist until the under water eruption occurred and formed the volcano. The hike was well worth it.
That afternoon we paid a visit to Auckland Zoo to see the Kiwi and the other animals.
we were supposed to go out that night but we still had jetlag so we decided against it.
